User talk:Some alex

re: the smith-waterman page:

I think the inclusions of the max elements in the original paper were a typo. I don't see them in any other implementations/lecture materials/teachings, and just thinking through the algorithm, I don't really think they make sense. Do you have any evidence aside from the original paper that their inclusion is correct?

Somechris (talk) 23:25, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

- It's Some alex. I'm not sure if I'm writing in the correct place, there is another way to discuss articles in wikipedia, I think. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Smith%E2%80%93Waterman_algorithm e.g. The very first comment there ("Wrong formula for matrix?") the guy provides a link to the paper and points out that, basically, max terms are needed there according to the article. Also from the formula itself it's clear that results (coefficients in the resulting matrix) may be different with max and without it in the case when gap-score function is not constant (or linear?). I don't know if it makes sense from the practical point of view but this article is about theoretical Smith-Waterman algorithm which published in that paper and in that paper max terms do present. So if we remove them from the wiki article then it will become inacurate sicne the original source has them. So, if the simplified algorithm (without max's) works for you then OK, you can modify it, it's going to be some modification of the original algorithm. But I believe we should not remove them from the article.